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A
cache is traditionally defined as a location that is used
to safely hide or store things. Your computer uses
the cache to temporarily store files that it may use again
in the very near future.
Since
browsing the internet requires downloading multiple files
from the internet to your computer ,
users often wait long periods while complete web pages
slowly show up on their computer screen. To speed up
browsing time, the files that are downloaded are
temporarily stored in the cache (referred to as Temporary
Internet Files in Internet Explorer). Therefore,
when a user revisits that web page, the browser will first
look in the cache for the information before it goes to
the internet. Files that are found in the cache
appear on the user's screen immediately.
Depending
on your internet browser and the version you are
working with, you may be able to change how much of your
hard drive disk space is dedicated to your cache.
You may also be able to change how often your computer
looks to the cache before it looks to the internet.
For example, the computer will look to the cache:
Every
Visit to the Page
Looks
at the web page on the internet every time you go to
it. If the page has updated since you visited it
last, it will retreive the new information. Since
you are constantly referring to the internet, this
option may increase your wait time while surfing.
However, if you want to always retrieve the newest
information on a web page without hitting the Refresh
Button, this option is what you want. |
Every
Time you Start your Browser
Each time you
start a surfing session the caching process
restarts itself. Therefore, the first time
you see a web page it will be cached and any time you
return to a web page, the
browser will compare the information on the internet to
that stored in your cache. If new information is
available, the browser will retrieve it. However,
during your surfing session from that point on, the
browser will always retrieve the information from your cache and
will not look for updated information on the
internet. Therefore, to ensure you have the most
recent information on web pages that are being updated
frequently, it will be necessary for you to use the
Refresh Button. |
Automatically
This setting will
first refer to all cache files and will not compare the
saved file to the version currently on the web.
However, if you are working offline, this option will
automatically connect you to the internet if the page is
not cached. |
Never
This setting forces
your browser to refer to the cached file unless none is
available. There is no time limit to this
option. Therefore, to ensure you have the most
recent information on web pages that are being updated
frequently, it will be necessary for you to use the
Refresh Button. |
Lastly,
since only a given amount of hard drive space is dedicated
to your cache, this space can fill up very quickly.
If you experience unexplainable slower downloads, you may
want to clear the files that are in the cache area.
Do not change the amount of disk space that is dedicated
to your cache without first notifying your technology
coordinator. If you dedicate too much space you may
limit the functionality of the other applications on your
computer.
When
browsing the internet, you will notice that periodically you
will wait quite a long time for a web page to appear on
your browser in the completed format. Often the text
of the page appears first and slowly the images appear
thereafter. Your computer, during your wait time, is
downloading multiple files from the web to your
computer. The web page itself is a file (HTML
language) and each and every image on the web page is its
own file. Unlike a word processing document, the
images don't ever become part of the document. They
are instead temporarily placed in a specified position on
the web page. For example, to view this web page,
your computer must download 19 files! It may have
loaded more quickly than expected, because many of the
images are the same from web pages that you previously
viewed. So, the computer is going to the cache for
as many of the files as possible. For the files it
can't find, it looks on the internet.
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Information about changing Cache (Temporary Internet Files) user
preferences can be located by locating the word
"cache" in the Help Menu. 
